Beat
by Dragoon-sama
Summary: Dave listens, and the world is a symphony.


**Beat**  
By: Dragoon-sama

* * *

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Ever since the start of the game, and if he were to be honest with himself even before that, Dave could hear the rhythm to things.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Bro's footsteps always had a flittery tap to them, barely audible and undetectable in his normal movement, and just not there at all when he was flashing around. Dave could still sometime hear the inaudible beat even then, but not as often as he liked.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

LoHaC had been a flood to his senses. The gears all whirring in the background, glugging under and through the lava, the blup blup blup of the bubbles of molten rock, the hissing of the heated air…it was a symphony of sounds that Dave had never heard before. So unlike the metal and concrete beat of the city he'd grown up in, though somehow familiar and welcoming all the same. Like a song you'd heard long ago and forgotten until now.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Meeting the others in person had been an experience. If it hadn't been a dire life-or-death (but mostly death) situation, Dave was sure he'd have been able to come up with some sick raps to represent them. Rose's liquid chocolate voice, the undercurrent of chittering nothuman a discordant chorus in the sound. Jade's tinkling melody that never went quite where he expected it to. John's breathy chirps and hum of energy. It all mashed up into the most wicked remix in Dave's mind, and his hands often itched for his turntables (not his time ones, though he wondered where and when he'd end up if he tried to play those beats).

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Then by far, the most interesting sounds to grace his ears had come when they'd met up with their alien trolls. Much like the unrelenting whine from Rose, the trolls had a nothuman sound to their movements, their voices, their breaths, their heartbeats. But unlike Rose, they weren't a fingernail on the chalkboard of the soul, but just a different flavor of sound Dave had never experienced before.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Terezi had been the first he'd observed, as surreptitiously as he could. She wasn't a very accommodating personality, so soon enough his surreptitious observations devolved into tongue-on-face observations. Not all of those came from Terezi either. Dave claimed irony.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Gamzee was another that caught his attention. There was so much chaos and cacophony in the fluidjerky movement of the juggalo, in the smoothfluxuating tones of his speech, in the lazyharsh set of his gaze. There were times when the beat from Gamzee scared Dave. Rather than admit to the failing he would instead spend a few minutes jamming in his own mind the unique flavor that made up the clown.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

But by far the most interesting character had to be Karkat, from Dave's point of view. The troll had been as advertised on the outside; short, stocky, filled with rage yet still completely harmless, and somehow as much of a leader as John tended to be. The pitter-patter sounds that came from any interaction between the two friendleaders was the closest thing to ever getting Dave to smile. Karkat used his range well, raging from one end of the spectrum right down to the lowest hissing noises his alien throat could manage. John's carefree tones modulated and wove around each word, easing the harshness and bolstering his own less than forceful opinions into a wave of pure driving force.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Still, it wasn't even the draw of the entertainment the forever capslocking troll provided that captured Dave's interest.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

It was the incongruity that Karkat presented. He i_had/i_ been everything expected on the outside. But Dave could hear the steady rhythm that vibrated out from the troll. Even when he was raging fit to bring the walls down with his ringing, expletive laden words, the stead pulse never faltered.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Soon enough, the beat had wormed its way so far into Dave's head that he was hearing it even when Karkat was rooms away, an impossible distance even for the natural resonance to have echoed back. In a moment of frustration, Dave had tried his hand at flustering Karkat, determined to shake the unwavering beat and start a new set up.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

Karkat had proven impossible to fluster. Oh, on the outside he stuttered and raged and even went quiet. Once, only once Dave had even managed to surprise a laugh out of the troll. That had almost been enough to shake Dave's determination away from his goal, as the pure feeling in the short burst of sound had held the taste of a rare mix you only find once in a lifetime.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

But the rhythm never faltered. Where Dave expected Karkat to flush with anger, or embarrassment, or even shame, the troll's skin remained as gray as a smooth stone. By now, even if they hadn't displayed their colors for all to see, Dave had seen the trolls' strange blood hemowhatsit in action as they cried, blushed, bled, and in at least one case licked. Never Karkat. Dave would have said he guarded it like a packrat guards their hoard, except it didn't seem like the troll was even aware of it.

_Beat. Beat. Beat._

When all his options had run out, Dave went for the simplest, yet most effective method he knew. He'd long forgotten why the steady rhythm that permeated his every waking moment had seemed annoying or grating.

_Beat. Beat. B-beat._

"…Ah! Fuck…Stride—"

A crack in the knight's armor, and Dave would have been a fool not to take it.

* * *

**A/N:** A prompt on Homesmut wouldn't get out of my head, and before I knew what happened, I'd written for it. Then I had to go back and hunt the prompt down again, orz.

* * *

_**Prompt:** I always see fic of Karkat crying or blushing basically at the drop of an extremely stylish hat, and these are wonderful things. Except...he's kept his blood color secret for six sweeps, including (implied) through the final boss battle, which would mean he didn't even bleed then. The times he cried were when he not only thought he was about to die having failed everyone, but there was no-one around who could see._

_So I'd like fic exploring the intense self-control that means he has, where he almost never lets himself blush or cry and is extremely careful, because there are so many things that can cut you._

_There can be pairings or not, I really don't care. Just some exploration of that self-control._


End file.
